MPC members split in November

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee was split three ways in November with one member voting for an interest rate rise and another to increase Quantitative Easing.

The latest MPC minutes show seven members of the committee, Mervyn King, Charles Bean, Paul Tucker, Spencer Dale, Paul Fisher, David Miles and Martin Weale all voted to keep interest rates and QE on hold.

But Adam Posen preferred to maintain Bank Rate at 0.5% and increase the size of the asset purchase programme by £50bn to a total of £250bn.

Jonathan Loynes, chief european economist at Capital Economics, says as expected, the voting pattern was unaltered.

But he says: “There were few signs that the rest of the committee is moving quickly in one direction or another.

“Most members still expect inflation to fall back to target in the medium-term, but feel that it would be premature to loosen policy without clearer signs of a slowdown in growth.

“If we are right in expecting those signs to materialise over the coming months, more QE may yet arrive in February.”

There is a right kind of QE whereby BoE would fund a BAD BANK to buy all the bad and doubtful debts of the banking systems in chunks at REAL MARKET VALUE so that the system ends up with realised losses and real balance sheets ready to lend properly. This solution has been suggested by various experts and I hopw will be taken seriously.

The right type of QE will help if BoE funds a Bad Bank to buy all the bad and doubtful debts of the banking system AT MARKET VALUE, thus enabling the selling banks to realise their losses, rebuild REAL balance sheets and start to lend properly. We used to blame Japan not to admit its failures post 1980s but don’t seem to want to face the music ourselves. Let’s hope that the great and good will at least seriously debate the pros and cons of the solution summarised. This has been suggested by various experts before.